None of these are particularly high quality. M31 in particular is barely recognizable. But I like them because they were taken with a simple DSLR camera from a somewhat light-polluted suburban front yard.

But I like them because they were taken with a simple DSLR camera from a somewhat light-polluted suburban front yard.

Wait, without a telescope? How did you get that quality?

1. A good 250mm zoom lens.
2. A Polarie polar tracking mount (which never quite worked, but did occasionally allow tracking shots of more than a few seconds).
3. Some post-processing techniques. The Jupiter shot was stacked, and the Orion Nebula and M31 images used contrast stretching to deepen the blacks without losing too many details.

I've got some other camera shots -- the Double Cluster in Perseus, and the Ring Nebula (M57) in Lyra -- but the quality there is not quite good enough.

Is that picture of a star going supernova? That explosion is huge! It must be light years across.

As I understand it's not going supernova but in the stage of "violently throwing stuff around" that comes before going supernova. So, will prolly go supernova in the future. And, it apparently is about 3 ly across.